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I love the state fair! So much fun. We never go to the midway or the rides or the depressing "world's largest pathetic animal" exhibits. Every year we do the same things: we go see the livestock, the rabbit house, the agricultural displays, the home ec contests (crafts, quilts, baked goods), the flower and garden show, walk around the "Village of Yesteryear" craft booths, have a cup of fresh apple juice (or hot cider, depending on the weather), and eat at least one bag of mini donuts.

Mini donuts are the best thing ever. They are so much better than funnel cake. They make the donuts right there in front of the window: the batter gets dropped into this little canal of oil, floats down the canal, gets flipped over by automatic paddles, then plops out the end onto paper towels. Then they stick a dozen in a bag, coat them in cinnamon sugar, and give them to you. There's only one mini donut place in the whole fair. It's right in front of the big building with the cows. But good news: they told me that next year they hope to have another mini donut outpost on the other side of the fairgrounds.

The new taste treat this year was deep fried banana pudding. Alas, this was not (as we had hoped) a chunk of banana pudding that had been deep fried. Actually it was a deep fried banana with a cup of pudding to dip it in. No vanilla wafers. The banana was really good though. I'm pretty sure this was only the second time I had eaten banana in the past two years (the first time being that amazing molten cake in Asheville) due to the low carb thing. I had forgotten how good banana tastes. Especially when it's all soft and gooshy and batter fried.

The livestock was fun, although we didn't see any pigs. That building was all goats instead. Maybe by now the pigs have already been judged and auctioned off. Or maybe they come later in the week? I don't know. We also didn't see the big butter sculpture in the cow building. Maybe they moved it someplace else, but we missed it. We saw the sheep though, and the rabbits. Georg and I agreed that the prettiest are the rex breed, which have gorgeous velvety fur. My favorite was a reddish brown called "castor," but Georg preferred red. Which was very similar to castor, but lighter.

This year we missed the piglet races, but we did get to see a new cute animal event: "Doggies of the Wild West." I was hoping this would be dogs in cowboy costumes doing tricks, and that's exactly what it was! Well not costumes actually, just bandanas. But they did cute tricks: the medium-sized dogs jumped over hurdles and danced, and the toy dogs balanced on the people's heads. One of the dogs actually balanced on one forepaw on the guy's hand! Alas, I didn't get a clear photo of it.

I always worry about whether the animals in these carnival shows are well treated. (This has become a concern for me about the piglet races, I've been feeling like I should try to find out more about them.) So I was glad to see that the dogs looked content and happy. There was a lot of affection between the people and the dogs: once when the guy picked up a dog, it licked his face. And I saw the woman petting and talking sweet to the dogs when she put them back inside their "stagecoach" crate. That made me feel good. They also announced that all the dogs were rescued from animal shelters, which was especially nice. Both of my dogs were rescued too. (But they don't do tricks. Unless lolling around is a trick.)

The crowds were surprisingly low today. I think the weather kept them away. This was great for me because I have a mild case of -- what do you call fear of crowds? -- well anyway, crowds bother me. There have been times at the state fair when the crowds were so thick that panic started to set in, I felt like I couldn't breathe and I was going to lose my shit if I didn't get out of there right now. Crowds don't stress me out unless they're so bad that it's difficult to move. Which it sometimes is at the fair. Lucky for me, the threat of rain kept enough people away that it was easy to walk around.

We did get rained on once, but we hung out in the Village of Yesteryear until it stopped. The weird thing in the Village of Yesteryear was a potter who, instead of demonstrating pottery, was sitting at his wheel hectoring the audience on their ignorance about American cultural history. "I'm supposed to educate you! Why do you need to be educated about our history? This is our history!" Um, dude, making people feel bad isn't likely to sell a lot of pottery. Though he did have a pretty big audience listening to the rant.

Every year I look at the entries in the sewing competition and think to myself that I should enter that. I have definitely made things as nice as the stuff that wins at least the second place ribbons and maybe the blue ribbon stuff too. Maybe next year I could enter the costume I'm working on now, the corset, chemise and bloomers. I wonder if it has to be made in 2005, or if it would be okay since I won't finish it until after this year's fair is over.

The best thing about the home ec competitions was seeing a prize-winning entry made by someone we know! Lisa's mom won second prize for her chocolate mint brownies. The entries didn't have names on them, so we're not 100% sure, but we think we saw her brownies. They were the only brownies that looked like mint, and they had a second prize ribbon on them. Yay for Lisa's mom!